A cool article on MIT’s annual sports statistics conference (via @storeylab). I love how the guy they chose to highlight created what I would consider a pretty simple visualization with known tools - but it turns out it is potentially a really new way of evaluating the shooting range of basketball players. This is my favorite kind of creativity in statistics.

This is an interesting article calling higher education a “credentials cartel”. I don’t know if I’d go quite that far; there are a lot of really good reasons for higher education institutions beyond credentialing like research, putting smart students together in classes and dorms, broadening experiences etc. But I still think there is room for a smart group of statisticians/computer scientists to solve the credentialing problem on a big scale and have a huge impact on the education industry.

Check out John Cook’s conjecture on statistical methods that get used: “The probability of a method being used drops by at least a factor of 2 for every parameter that has to be determined by trial-and-error.” I’m with you. I wonder if there is a corollary related to how easy the documentation is to read?

If you haven’t read Roger’s post on Statistics and the Science Club, I consider it a must-read for anyone who is affiliated with a statistics/biostatistics department. We’ve had feedback by email/on twitter from other folks who are moving toward a more science oriented statistical culture. We’d love to hear from more folks with this same attitude/inclination/approach.